The Shame of a City is a 2006 feature-length documentary directed by Tigre Hill about the final month of the 2003 Philadelphia Mayoral Election. During that election, incumbent Democrat John Street sought to defeat his Republican challenger Sam Katz. Philadelphia is predominantly Democratic, but early polls showed Katz with a small lead. Twenty-seven days prior to the election, the FBI revealed that it was investigating Street for corruption, but polls showed that the public supported Street more after the scandal broke. Hill attempts to investigate how Street turned the corruption scandal into an advantage.
The film is named after Lincoln Steffens’s 1904 book The Shame of the Cities, which sought to expose the wrongdoing of public officials in cities across the United States.